Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Resort Review

Turn on your JavaScript to view content

If you follow along with me on Instagram Stories, you probably saw that my mom and I visited the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in The Bahamas a few weeks ago. I wasn’t actually planning on doing a review post of the resort, so I didn’t take that many professional photos on our trip. But once we experienced a few days at the Hyatt property, I knew I had to share it with you! With that said, please forgive the quality of the (mostly) iPhone photos. 🙂

The reason for our trip was wedding-related. Michael and I are getting married at this resort in January! If you missed the post on how we decided on The Bahamas, check it out here!

Getting There

The Hyatt Baha Mar is located on the island of Nassau, the main island in The Bahamas. There is a large airport in Nassau, which makes getting there pretty easy. My mom and I flew from New Orleans to Atlanta to Nassau. The flight from Atlanta was about 2 hours.

The Nassau airport is really nice! Especially compared to other Caribbean airports that I’ve visited. You’ll need a passport to visit The Bahamas so make sure you plan ahead on that front! Upon arrival, the security scanning process was pretty easy. I will note that we visited during a down time so there weren’t many tourists in general traveling to the island. We breezed through security and customs.

There’s no Lyft or Uber in The Bahamas. Upon the Hyatt’s recommendation, we grabbed a taxi at the airport. It was easy to locate the legit taxi drivers as there’s a lone line of them and people happily pointed us in the right direction. An important note, you must bring cash! The taxi drivers only accept cash.

The Rooms

The Hyatt Baha Mar property is gigantic. The Hyatt property itself boasts over 1800 rooms spread across two towers (the East and West). Not only is the Hyatt itself huge, but it’s connected to two other properties as well, Rosewood Baha Mar and SLS Baha Mar. It’s a unique setup in that all of the properties are connected and share amenities. You can walk from the SLS lobby, through the Hyatt property, and into the Rosewood lobby.

We stayed in the East tower of the Hyatt Baha Mar. I LOVED our room! We had a room with two queen beds, an ocean view, and a Juliette balcony. I highly recommend paying the few extra bucks for the ocean view. When we were walking around the property, I noticed several floors of rooms that directly faced a brick wall. I would hate to travel to the Caribbean and have to stare at a brick wall out of my window for a week. Another aspect to consider when booking your room is whether a full size balcony is important to you. Some rooms have step-out, Juliette balconies like ours, while others had full size balconies with a table and chairs.

The interior of the room was so fun and fresh (see photo below)! Not at all like your typical beach resort decor. The bathroom was spacious with a soaking tub, shower, and double sinks. There was also an option to slide the doors of the bathroom completely open so that you could get an ocean view while soaking in the tub! I was really impressed with our room!

The Property

The Hyatt Baha Mar property is larger than life. It really blew me away. The property is virtually brand new as it has been open for less than two years at this point. This is very evident by the decor, the landscaping, and the general vibes of the property.

The Casino //

Upon arrival at the property, you are greeted with massive waterfalls out front and then you enter through a beautifully decorated lobby. The lobby is situated in between the East and West towers of the Hyatt and leads out into the largest casino floor in the Caribbean. While I’m not much of a gambler, the casino was pretty impressive! The floor boasts every casino game you can imagine. Along with a casino, there’s also a sports book where guests can watch sports and place bets on the action.

Shops & Restaurants //

On the outside of the casino floor is where you’ll find most of the shops and restaurants. The shops range from high end like Tiffany & Co. to more mainstream shops like M.A.C. makeup.

The Pools //

Once you venture outside, the real beauty of the resort shines. There are six different pools on the Hyatt property, which is a lot, but honestly, I would have guessed there were more just from walking around the resort! The pools are all situated in a winding complex in between the hotel towers and the beach. The pools are impressive! There’s a pool with cabanas, a pool with a rainfall feature, a pool with a cliff jump, a pool with a built in aquarium, a pool with a swim up bar … you get the point!

Flamingoes & Aquarium //

There are a number of different restaurants mixed within the pool area (more on those below). On your walk to the beach, you’ll also find the flamingo sanctuary where there’s a community of flamingoes hanging out and a live aquarium (attached to one of the pools) that includes nurse sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and other fish.

The Beach //

With the extensiveness of the property, you may forget that there’s also a beach! The Grand Hyatt Baha Mar is located on Cable Beach, a 3,000 foot stretch of pristine, white sand beach.

Activities //

The resort offers daily activities at the beach that are included in the resort fee. The activities include standup paddle boarding, kayaking, hanging out in the water hammocks or floating lounges, and snorkeling. There’s also a boat that runs once every hour out to an island right off of Cable Beach. We didn’t make it over to the island, but apparently there’s another beach for guests to hang out on and there’s a restaurant and bar on site as well.

The resort also offers an opportunity to feed the sea turtles, nurse sharks, stingrays, and flamingoes for a fee. However, I’d recommend catching the complimentary daily viewing of the feedings at 10:30AM & 1:30PM.

The Gym & Spa //

Lastly, it’s worth noting that the Hyatt Baha Mar has an outstanding workout facility and spa. My mom and I used the gym a few times during our stay. It is not at all your typical resort gym. It has true, clip-in spin bikes on an outside balcony, over 20 cardio machines, a weight machine section, free weights, TRX bands, and a box jump area, along with daily group class offerings like yoga and zumba. The gym is included in your stay where the classes, I believe, are $10 each.

We didn’t partake in any of the spa services, but the spa itself looked beautiful!

Where to Eat

Not only is the Hyatt Baha Mar property itself impressive, the restaurants are equally as noteworthy, which is hard to say about most resorts! The restaurants at Baha Mar make you feel like you’re off property. The decor, ambiance, drinks, and food at all of the restaurants we dined at were outstanding. There are SO many dining options on site that you could easily stay for an entire week and never have to leave the resort for a meal.

On the casual side, there’s a large Starbucks on site (a LARGE Starbucks, not one of those tiny hotel “we proudly serve Starbucks” spots) and a plethora of shack-like food joints along one side of the pool layout. There you have a handful of options like Da’ Poke Bowl and DAQ’s. Also on the casual front, there are adorable airstream food trailers parked on the beach with options like Sandy Dog and Flame to Smoke.

There are several pool-side dining options as well like The Palms and Drift Bar.

We dined at Café Madeline for breakfast two different mornings. Café Madeline (shown below) is an adorable french bistro serving delicious coffees, pastries, and fresh to-order items like avocado toast and poached eggs.

For lunch, we dined at both pool side spots, The Palms and Drift Bar. Both were outstanding. My mom and I shared hummus, salads, and a kabob plate between the two spots.

There are just as many dinner options as there are lunch spots. We dined at Costa, which is actually on Rosewood’s property. But like I mentioned above, you’re able to easily access both Rosewood and SLS (you can hardly even tell that you’re crossing onto another property). Costa was AMAZING! I would describe it as modern Mexican. The restaurant itself is tucked away and sits on top of winding paths of water. My mom and I both had table-side margaritas and split the house made guacamole and tacos.

We also dined at Fi’lia, an Italian restaurant. To my point above, I thought this restaurant was located in the Hyatt portion of the property, but when I looked it up to link here, it’s technically part of SLS. It was delicious and their wine menu was outstanding!

While looking through the Hyatt Baha Mar website to write this article, I noticed that not all of the restaurants on site are listed on the website, so know that there are more options than what might appear. You can find a list of the Hyatt Baha Mar restaurants here, Rosewood restaurants here, and SLS restaurants here.

After Hours

After dinner there are plenty of options to keep the night going! We ventured to the Jazz Bar on a couple of occasions. It’s located right off of the casino floor. There’s live music there every single night from 8pm – 2am. And if that’s not enough for you, there’s also a dance club on site! The club is open Thursday – Saturday. This is all in addition to the bars and casino on site.

Travel Tips

Lastly, a few travel tips to leave you with so that you’re prepared for your trip to Baha Mar!

Bring cash. Like I mentioned, the taxi drivers do not accept credit cards. They do accept U.S. dollars.

Update your phone plan. There’s strong WiFi on site, but I like having a working cell phone so that I can use Google Maps to/from the airport. I have the Verizon Travel Plan, which allows me to use my normal plan plus pay $10/day for everyday that I’m out of the country.

Customs. Be aware that you will go through customs upon leaving The Bahamas at the Nassau airport. Unlike most places that you’ve likely traveled outside of the U.S., you go through customs BEFORE arriving in the U.S. Global Entry included. All of it happens at the Nassau airport. With that being said, it is imperative that you arrive at the airport around 2-3 hours prior to your flight. (That’s coming from someone who is strict about not arriving more than an hour prior to a flight time.) The positive note is that once you make it through customs in The Bahamas, you don’t have to deal with it upon arriving back into the States.

Overall Thoughts

Plan a trip now, you won’t regret it. Everything about the resort is outstanding. The service, the rooms, the lobby, the amenities, the restaurants, the pools, the beach … everything. It honestly exceeded my expectations by a lot. If you’re looking for a tropical destination with all of the bells and whistles, this is your spot.

If you have any questions about the resort, feel free to email me at cobaltchroniclesblog@gmail.com!

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

You can adjust all of your cookie settings by navigating the tabs on the left hand side.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.